Cyclonic separation is a method of removing particulates from an air, gas or liquid stream, without the use of filters, through vortex separation. Rotational effects and gravity are used to separate mixtures of solids and fluids.
A high speed rotating flow of heterogeneous material is established within a vertical, inverted, frusto-conical housing. The material flows in a helical pattern, beginning at the top (wide end) of the cyclone and ending at the bottom (narrow) end before exiting the cyclone in a straight stream through the centre of the cyclone and out the top. Larger and denser particles in the rotating stream have too much inertia to follow the tight curve of the stream, and strike the outside wall, then falling to the bottom of the cyclone where they are removed in an underflow.
Ceramic lined cyclones are wear resistant separators used commonly in the art of minerals processing. Typically a steel, truncated-conical cyclone body has outward-directed, radial flanged ends configured to accept inlet and outlet assemblies, and an inner conical wall surface. Tapered blocks of sintered alumina or a like ceramic are progressively glued on the inner conical wall surface to build up a wear-resistant surface.
There is an inherent limitation of the size of monolithic liner blocks that can be isostatically pressed. That is, isostatic presses can only produce fairly small ceramic liner block portions which in turn means that multiple liner portions (commonly and henceforth referred to as “tiles”) are required to line a cyclone. To date the conventional method of producing cyclone components with these tiles is to adhere them to the internal steel surface of the cyclone shell. Given differential shrinkage between tiles, the amount of glue applied to each tile as well as the applicator's ability to force each tile into the correct position, the working surface of the cyclone (inner surface of the tile) is inevitably uneven. In use with slurries or other fluids, this can lead to biased and more rapid wear of the cyclone interior tiles, as well as loss of cyclone efficiency.